Ryan Harris' slaying haunts mother and city

Seven years after Ryan Harris' young body was found in an overgrown lot in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, her mother cannot let her go.

Even though the 11-year-old was found raped and murdered on July 28, 1998, Sabrina Harris refers to her as though she were still with her, the eldest of her seven children.

She will tell you that her daughter, whom she calls "Cookie" because of her love of butter cookies, is 18 years old and will be 19 when her birthdate rolls around on Dec. 14. She will tell you how smart and tough she is and so full of potential.

Then her voice quavers when the truth comes to her.

"I'm not crazy. She is the oldest. I say it because she is still my child," Harris said in a rare interview. "She would have graduated from 8th grade. She would be going to the prom this year."

Her daughter's death is an open wound for Sabrina Harris, 34, who has a tattoo of Ryan on her right arm.

"My daughter should have had justice. It's time for closure for everyone," she said.

The killing of Ryan Harris is an open wound for the city too. On Monday, jury selection is expected to begin in a civil trial over a lawsuit filed by the family of the oldest of two boys initially--and falsely--charged with Ryan's murder.

The boy--now 15 and whom the Tribune will not name because he is a juvenile--is suing the city and two homicide detectives in Cook County Civil Court.

Twelve days after Ryan's body was found, authorities charged a 7-year-old boy and 8-year-old boy with the murder, making them the youngest murder suspects in the nation at the time.

A little more than a month later--after police investigators and high-ranking officials hit the airwaves decrying them as young monsters--the boys were freed. Forensics tests uncovered semen on the girl's underwear, which, because of the boys' ages, could not have come from them.

The evidence implicated an older man, Floyd Durr, 36, whose case is expected to go to trial Aug. 8, according to Harris and court records.

Lawyers for the 15-year-old boy said in the suit that he has suffered emotionally after he was falsely arrested and prosecuted. At the heart of the suit are allegations that a statement attributed to the younger boy by investigators was fabricated.

They also claim that the officers, Detectives James Cassidy and Allen Nathaniel, conspired to falsely arrest them. Cassidy retired from the department last year after a nearly 30-year career. Nathaniel, who joined in 1982, is still working, a police spokesman said.

City officials deny the false-arrest charge.

But last week, as lawyers were hammering out pre-trial motions in the civil suit, a resolution was introduced in the City Council asking city lawyers to settle the case.

The council's Finance Committee this year approved a $2 million settlement for the younger boy. In an unusual outcry by several aldermen, officials said publicly that the children deserved far more money.

In last week's resolution to the Finance Committee introduced and drafted by Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th), she and 12 other aldermen said the boy should get $10 million to $15 million. "I don't think we need to relive the events of 1998. We don't need to go through that again in the city," Lyle said. "[Sabrina Harris] needs some closure in her life."

Sabrina Harris, who has received a subpoena to testify in the civil case of the older boy, said the children deserve to get $1 million a day that they were labeled as the killers. They were charged on Aug. 9 and released 38 days later. She said that investigators made her think they were guilty so much that she wanted them dead.

"They had me hating those little boys. You never would have believed I was a parent for the hatred I had for them."

Lyle said officials don't want the Police Department and the city to get another black eye and turn back the positive work the CAPS community-policing program is doing, pointing to an $18 million settlement for the family of Latonya Haggerty, who was killed by police in 1999.

In the resolution, she pointed out that a deposition by medical examiner Dr. Mitra Kalelkar indicated that before charging the boys Kalelkar told police she did not believe they were involved. She said the city already has spent $5 million to defend the officers and to settle the first case. "We're tired of paying judgments for what police officers are doing," Lyle said.

Ryan's badly beaten body was found in a lot behind a building in the 6600 block of South Parnell Avenue. Her skull was fractured, and she was naked from the waist down. Her underwear had been torn off and stuffed in her mouth and weeds had been pushed into her nostrils.

Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, said city lawyers had been holding settlement talks until last week with a mediator and lawyers for the boy. But they didn't reach a settlement.

Harris said that deep down, she never believed the boys were responsible. And she's angry that authorities made her doubt her own instinct.

As the oldest of five girls and one boy, the athletic Ryan would have fought them off, her mother said. In news accounts at the time, the boys are described as being so small that their feet were dangling from their seats in a Cook County Juvenile Court room. "I was looking dead on, looking at them and I told my mother they didn't do it. I fell on my mother's lap crying, and I told her they didn't do it," she said. "I know my daughter fought for her life."

Harris said that she has been attending the pre-trial hearings for Durr since he was arrested in October 1998 and charged with her daughter's killing. Durr has been convicted of four other sexual assaults and is serving more than a hundred years in prison

Durr should get the death penalty, Harris said.

She believes her daughter would be alive had the police taken Durr off the streets when he first became a suspect in several other rapes of the time. The Tribune has reported that days before Ryan Harris was killed, an analyst at the state crime lab told Chicago police that DNA evidence had linked Durr to two other attacks on young girls.

Harris uses her daughter's killing to teach her children to be careful. But she reserves her visits to her gravesite for herself, calling it "our private time."

"The worst thing I saw was her in a casket, she didn't deserve to be there," Harris said. "He robbed the world."